And no, that's not pronounced "asses."
Well, we put in an offer on the house on Friday afternoon. We haven't heard anything yet, but that's hardly surprising, considering today is the first business day since the offer went in. Technically they have up to 14 days to respond with their counteroffer--IF they think our offer is worthy of responding to at all--so we may not know for a while. I drove past the house yesterday afternoon and there was a realtor there showing it to some people; I felt like licking the doorknobs like the guy in that Volkswagen commercial.
Even without the worry about the house, tension is mounting simply because there's suddenly only two weeks till Christmas. This year we decided not only to send out Christmas cards for the first time, but also to attempt to write our first Christmas newsletter. Turns out it's extremely difficult, and particularly when you have other things on your mind, to write a letter about your year that even remotely resembles anything people might be interested in reading. And then on top of that...well, first I have to let you in on a horrible fact. After we got married last fall, we wrote our thank-you cards fairly promptly--or rather, we wrote MOST of our thank-you cards fairly promptly. Naturally, we didn't want to send some out before others, we wanted everyone to get them around the same time...which means they're ALL STILL AT OUR HOUSE.
Therefore, I had the brilliant idea that we should include them in our Christmas cards, and in the letter we could give a little apology, give people license to tease us forever about it, that sort of thing. Well, that not only doubles the number of cards to get ready, but also increases the number of envelopes we'd been planning on mailing out the first place, since there are a good number of people who need thank-yous who might not otherwise have made the Christmas card list. It's madness.
And of course, I have to wonder if it's actually just ME that's crazy, since Allen really doesn't seem to care one way or another if we ever send the thank-you cards at all. It's certainly not that we aren't truly thankful for the wedding gifts people gave us--we loved everything we got and were touched and grateful. But I'm sure by this time half the people hardly even remember what they gave us. I know when I've gotten a thank-you card in the mail I've always been sort of pleasantly surprised, sort of an "oh yeah, people who aren't us actually send these, don't they?" moment. It makes me think most people haven't noticed the absence of thank-you card, or if they have, haven't really been terrifically concerned about it. But there's going to be that handful of people who have been expecting one from us this whole year, and while they've given up hope on ever actually receiving it, they still grow more bitter about it every second that one doesn't arrive. I am feeling a desperate need to stop this process.
So if anyone has any wonderful, innovative, yet un-cheesy ideas about how to make a Christmas letter more interesting, please let me know so I can get these things into the mail before I give myself ulcers.
In other, happier news, however, we put up some outdoor lights in the unseasonably warm sunshine yesterday, and plan to finally go and get our Christmas tree on Tuesday evening after I get home from teaching violin lessons. I have an unfounded hope that my stress level will go down and my productivity will increase once we get the house Christmas-ed up.
I also got an early Christmas present from my dad (as did neconeko and fadedtwilightx) when he provided us with tickets to the absolutely lovely Peter Mayer concert on Saturday night at the Fitzgerald (one of my all time favorite theaters no matter what or who is playing there). He has had a holiday concert in early December for something like eleven years now, and we've gone now for two years in a row; maybe we can start making it a tradition. I'd like that.
Even without the worry about the house, tension is mounting simply because there's suddenly only two weeks till Christmas. This year we decided not only to send out Christmas cards for the first time, but also to attempt to write our first Christmas newsletter. Turns out it's extremely difficult, and particularly when you have other things on your mind, to write a letter about your year that even remotely resembles anything people might be interested in reading. And then on top of that...well, first I have to let you in on a horrible fact. After we got married last fall, we wrote our thank-you cards fairly promptly--or rather, we wrote MOST of our thank-you cards fairly promptly. Naturally, we didn't want to send some out before others, we wanted everyone to get them around the same time...which means they're ALL STILL AT OUR HOUSE.
Therefore, I had the brilliant idea that we should include them in our Christmas cards, and in the letter we could give a little apology, give people license to tease us forever about it, that sort of thing. Well, that not only doubles the number of cards to get ready, but also increases the number of envelopes we'd been planning on mailing out the first place, since there are a good number of people who need thank-yous who might not otherwise have made the Christmas card list. It's madness.
And of course, I have to wonder if it's actually just ME that's crazy, since Allen really doesn't seem to care one way or another if we ever send the thank-you cards at all. It's certainly not that we aren't truly thankful for the wedding gifts people gave us--we loved everything we got and were touched and grateful. But I'm sure by this time half the people hardly even remember what they gave us. I know when I've gotten a thank-you card in the mail I've always been sort of pleasantly surprised, sort of an "oh yeah, people who aren't us actually send these, don't they?" moment. It makes me think most people haven't noticed the absence of thank-you card, or if they have, haven't really been terrifically concerned about it. But there's going to be that handful of people who have been expecting one from us this whole year, and while they've given up hope on ever actually receiving it, they still grow more bitter about it every second that one doesn't arrive. I am feeling a desperate need to stop this process.
So if anyone has any wonderful, innovative, yet un-cheesy ideas about how to make a Christmas letter more interesting, please let me know so I can get these things into the mail before I give myself ulcers.
In other, happier news, however, we put up some outdoor lights in the unseasonably warm sunshine yesterday, and plan to finally go and get our Christmas tree on Tuesday evening after I get home from teaching violin lessons. I have an unfounded hope that my stress level will go down and my productivity will increase once we get the house Christmas-ed up.
I also got an early Christmas present from my dad (as did neconeko and fadedtwilightx) when he provided us with tickets to the absolutely lovely Peter Mayer concert on Saturday night at the Fitzgerald (one of my all time favorite theaters no matter what or who is playing there). He has had a holiday concert in early December for something like eleven years now, and we've gone now for two years in a row; maybe we can start making it a tradition. I'd like that.